LOOKING BACKWARD: Insights into building and sustaining the new currency of success in real life, real work and real time.

First published in 1888, Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy was a best selling novel that told the story of a Bostonian who woke up after a slumber of one hundred years to find himself in the almost utopian world of 2000.  A world where peace, goodwill towards one’s fellow man, cooperation, harmony and prosperity reigned supreme.

The desire to not only build but sustain greater peace, prosperity and goodwill is a cause that we must continue to champion, because we stand on a glass cliff, fighting a new war in our lives, in our communities, in our workplaces, in a world of unreason. A war that is dangerous, a war that is silent but deadly.

It is a war to conquer the dark side of human nature, the madness of man that has let to the deaths of over one hundred million people in the past hundred years.  One hundred million people killed in wars.  The madness of man that has made most of America’s major cities danger zones after 6pm.  The madness of man that is insidiously tearing at the social and moral fabric of our families, our lives, our communities, our workplaces.

At the turn of the last century there was a longing, a desire to believe that the changes, the upheaval caused by industrialization would lead us to a better world.  And, yet at the turn of this century we can look backwards and recognize that technology cannot save us from the madness of man.  Hope lies in a renaissance of the values that drive and sustain leadership, the communication that creates a balance between independence and interdependence, the human decency that is so often lost in a battle for a better balance sheet.

History is our greatest teacher.  Leadership need not be conspicuous in its absence. Every step we take individually and collectively to not only build social responsibility, but a moral contract that speaks to our heads and our hearts is a step away from the glass cliff. Leadership is something we need to aspire to in our own lives, because it is our ability to lead from a place of integrity, honesty and with the universal values that are the underpinning of civilization and democracy that will take us forward…OR NOT.